Liberace Museum strikes final notes

On Sunday, the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas closed in financial ruin. It was 32. And yet for the past month, the museum has been packed with six times as many customers as usual, ever since news broke internationally of the museum’s oncoming death.

October 17, 2010 - 11:00 pm

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Last year, a teacher walked into the Liberace Museum and asked if she could play "the Gershwin piano" — one of three pianos Gershwin owned when he wrote "Rhapsody in Blue."

The museum said OK. The teacher had to sign a release, asserting she was classically trained and could play a whole song. She had to wash her hands. Then the Gershwin piano was all hers.

"Tears were just pouring down her face," recalls museum volunteer Sol Feivish. "People heard the music and started to applaud."

That piano — a gift to Liberace from Shecky Greene’s second ex-wife — is now locked away with everything else. On Sunday, the museum closed in financial ruin.

And yet for the past month, the museum has been packed with six times as many customers as usual, ever since news broke internationally of the museum’s oncoming death. It was 32.

Left out of work are 23 part-time and full-time employees, plus volunteers like Brenda Dupont, who started at the museum in August.

"My son passed away a year and a half ago, and I had to get out of the house," Dupont said.

"I thought, ‘Liberace could be a lot of fun.’ And it was!"

In the museum’s costume room, Dupont (who knew Liberace from Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson) was fond of watching wives convince husbands to put on a heavy Liberace cape for photos.

"Men would try it on," Dupont said with a smile. "Women didn’t want to."

Also out of work is Tanya Combs, who started in 2000, when her kids were around driving age and often gone, when her pilot-husband at the time was always flying off.

Plus, Combs, a former teacher, was battling breast cancer and wanted to get out and do something.

So she started as a tour guide.

Her husband objected, "I can’t believe you’re going to take that job for $7 an hour."

Her son griped, "You have a job. You’re a housewife!"

But 10 years later, Combs exited as director of operations.

"This job saved my life," Combs said Sunday on a lunch break with peers in a back room. "This is the friendliest group of people I’ve ever worked with."